Why do clients hire you? Think about it for a minute. Over the past 13 years as a photographer/entrepreneur, I’ve realized that the reason people hired me was not always what I assumed it was, especially in the beginning years of building my business and reputation. I would have liked to think that people hired me because they had to have me as their photographer. Looking back over my first few years though, I realized that many of the people who hired me did so not because of who I was, or what I did, but for some other lesser reason. They might have hired me because I was the most economical, because I sold them on me, because I had a show special, or because I
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5 Tips for Increasing Your Portrait Sales
All the time I hear about successful wedding photographers dabbling in portrait photography who can’t figure out how to actually make any money shooting portraits. It has nothing to do with their photography and everything to do with the way they run their businesses. And it’s no wonder, considering that it’s a whole different business model and needs to be approached in a different way. For weddings, we make most of our money up front by selling packages. Prints or album upgrades after the fact tend to be more of a bonus income stream. If portrait clients were willing to spend thousands up front then we wouldn’t need to worry so much about how many prints we sell. But unfortunately this just doesn’t seem to
Top Ten Tips for Posing
When the Community Team asked me to start blogging about posing, my first thought was….”huh, I don’t know anything about posing.” And then I started my top ten list for posing tips and I realized that I had over 20. Oops. So maybe I do know a thing or two, but after 8 years some things start to become so second nature that you don’t realize you’re doing them. So don’t worry, if you find this to be challenging, it does get easier with practice. So before I jump right in, I want to define what I consider posing to be. And it has very little to do with the chin being tilted just so or the fingers on the hand being spread a particular